One of the most important things that at an artist should not skimp on is to have good photographs/documentation of his or her artwork. I had photographs of my two most recent large scale drawings taken by a professional art photographer this week (Peter Jacobs Fine Art Imaging...for those in the NJ area, I recommend him highly). And, the difference in his photos of "The Carrier" (see below) and my photos is night and day.
These images truly document what the drawings look like:
So now, onto the next tree drawing...
I have three *very* tiny drawings in the upcoming show
Lilliput: Tiny Art for Big People
at the Walsh Gallery at Seton Hall University. If you are in town for the studio tour, then drop by and see this fabulous show - it will open a day early for the studio tour on June 7th.
All work is 1.5 inches or smaller - including the frame(!).
Curated by Asha Ganpat and Jeanne Brasile - who also curated the previous Lilliput show at Redsaw in Newark - this show will likely be as marvelous as the last. It is unbelievable what an artist can pack into such a tiny format.
Here is a sneak peak of two of my three pieces in the show:
These are reproduced a little larger than actual size. I drew them with both the aid of a microscope and a magnifier to maximize the details...my limitation was the pencil point. Even the lines of a .3mm mechanical pencil are clunky when drawing on such a small scale.
More info:
Seton Hall University
400 South Orange Avenue, South Orange, NJ
Gallery Hours: Monday - Thursday 10:30 AM - 4:30 PM
The South Orange - Maplewood Studio Tour will be next Sunday, June 7th from 11 AM until 5 PM. This year there are about 75 participating artists and I will be showing some of my newest drawings at 1978 Maplewood Arts Center. If you are in the area, then stop by and go on the tour! Details on tickets are available at the above studio tour link, but you can also come to 1978 or to the Baird Center on the day of the tour to purchase tickets. It is a lot of fun to see what is going on with the artists that live and work in the two towns.
Once again, I will be exhibiting in 1978 and not in my studio. For a couple of the first studio tours I did show in my own studio, but I realized that it was just too much of an undertaking for a one-day event. I have such limited working time and the preparation for visitors took three weeks (seriously) out of my routine to prepare and clean up my house (which always had to be re-cleaned the night before the tour thanks to my three little ones).
And, to tell the truth, I am not a tidy artist. I do not have one of those lovely, well lit and soaring ateliers with finished work casually sitting on polished wood easels nor do I have taborets with systematically arranged studio supplies. Rather, I have a spare room in my house that is crammed to the gills with nearly every drawing I have done since college as well as my art books, my cds, and my drawing supplies.
And, I am a total and complete failure at maintaining any semblance of organization. If there is one of those mindless Facebook quizzes for "Which Peanuts Character Are You?" I do not need to take it, because I already know that I am Pig-Pen (with some elements of Lucy and Peppermint Patty).
Besides, organization is myth, you know! Or at least I like to pretend that it is: years ago on NPR I heard about a study of the workspaces of stockbrokers which found that the ones with the really messy desks had the best average returns. The messiest brokers knew where everything was and were very visual with their space - they did not need to alphabetize or file...and of course I stowed this story away in my brain in defense of my inability to keep a neat studio space.
Oh, I can clean house with the best of them, but I would rather draw! And, when I am in the zone and working I know were everything is that I need. It is organized enough for me to find my stuff; it is just not neat enough (or necessarily safe enough) for an afternoon of visitors.
So, in the spirit of "Studio Tour" I am offering my very own virtual studio tour right here...no need to trip up over my books or awkwardly shift around in my tiny work space...all the details are below. It is a win-win because I do not have to clean, and you get to see my space.
But, do come by on the 7th to say "hi" and visit with many of the other artists who do have soaring ateliers and lovely organization...(if you have been on the tour, you know who I am talking about)...
THE TOUR
Here is the studio with the door open (it usually stays locked to keep out the curious little ones). I store my drawings on the right side of the room (out of the image) & I work on the left side of the room:
I keep track of the hours that I work - this is partially to keep myself on track with drawings and partially obsessional behavior:
The side wall - all Ikea shelves filled with stuff:
The easel shelf which holds pencils, pencils, pencils, and a lot of cut-up erasers:
The taboret:
An impromptu mini-still life on the taboret consisting of one shell, one silver thimble from my grandmother, and an X-acto:
My 1960s vintage AO Spencer microscope which I *love* ~courtesy of my father's recent laboratory clean-up:
The top of my bookshelf is simply another surface to stack stuff:
A bit of listening is in order during drawing times! I primarily listen to audio books from the library (the mindless thriller variety are a favorite because I do not have to think, but I do enjoy the narrative classics such as Charles Dickens, too) and on top of that is one of many piles of cds:
I do not normally listen to music when I draw, but if I did listen to anything in the past year it would be in this stack:
My picture books:
My muse~ Princess Saralinda from James Thurber's Thirteen Clocks - I painted her during a summer children's book illustration course about 10 years ago. The illustration was not so great, but I loved the Princess so I cut her out and she is now the muse of the studio:
This concludes the virtual studio tour. Thanks for stopping by and be sure to check out the real studio tour on June 7th!
The new piece is finished! These are not the best photos (will this rain ever stop??!! I cannot get outside to photograph!) ~ but I did not want to wait to post the finished work.
The Carrier (XX + XY = XX)
graphite and pigment/ink on Arches paper
48 x 30 inches
Details:
OK...so I have not actually formulated a statement on this one (as of yet), but I have been thinking about what prompted the piece:
Most of my drawings begin viscerally - I do not start with a subject or an idea and then work for a visual solution in the manner of an illustrator. Perhaps this is why I fail miserably at illustration - I have trouble thinking in words or using logic to plan a visual image without creating something that looks contrived. And, by the way, I adore illustration - early 20th century illustrators were a major influence for me (but that is a topic for another post).
However, many of my drawings have started with words or a phrase as a reference point, or maybe a concept that has been tossing around in my head, but even these images come to me as complete visions or sensations. (And yes, this is the flat out definition of synesthesia. It comes from years of moving visuals around in my head and now my right-brain dominance cannot be restrained).
Since my drawings are so highly refined, viewers may think that they are consciously designed like an illustration. Quite frankly, my worst drawings are the ones where I actually think about the concept while I am resolving the composition - these are inevitably stiff and feel contrived. The best are the ones where I just draw away and don't reflect or try to deconstruct the imagery that is coming through me and into the sketchbook.
There were two sketches before the idea came to me as a whole complete thought.
The first was the idea of that which is internalized suddenly being externalized; seeing through the body to the inner workings:
The second was what I have, in retrospect, called the "tooth-cell" - it is like an invading microbe - a thing that eats away at the insides (only this one has an old family photo inside):
Then, the tooth-cell migrated into a true self-portrait - and this was the final sketch before I started the drawing:
When I did this sketch, I knew this was the imagery that I wanted, but the practicality of executing the drawing was to be considered:
How will the figure fit within the format of the page?
How large can the drawing be to fit into a mat and frame?
This is the point that I started tinkering with the format and composition of the drawing. For this piece, I started with a photograph (self-portrait) with the pose I wanted to use for the drawing. This photo was cropped, narrowed, shortened, widened, and reformatted until I came up with the positive/negative space relationship that felt right. I then, by using the "image size" function in photoshop, I convert this into inches - height and width - with consideration of the maximum size I can draw and have the piece fit in a frame.
The rest of the little microcosmic details fell into place within the framework of the figure. I actually had no clue how I was going to draw the background until the figure was finished (sometimes I have to see the figure finished it to know how the negative space can be resolved) and in this case I serendipitously stumbled across an old photograph of my father and one of his cousins (it is always a serendipitous notion - or perhaps a leap of faith - that makes the drawing come together at some point well after it is underway).
The stamping of the "XY" occurred to me later, too - I was going to draw the letters onto the hands but I had a vision of something more like a hand stamp - or a tattoo - a more permanent branding of the letters.
Oh, and speaking of leaps of faith...it is quite a nail-biter to wield an inked rubber stamp to a completed drawing...
I have to think more about this piece before I come up with a statement. In the meantime, I will be posting a fun studio side project in a few days!